


Apotheosis

by SwoodMaxProductions



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Found Family, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Ascension achievement, Sleepy Cuddles, kind of, metaphysical stuff, moth grandma is best goddess, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 13:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18388955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwoodMaxProductions/pseuds/SwoodMaxProductions
Summary: Thanks to the Wielder, the Seer’s ascension goes... several steps further.





	Apotheosis

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by:  
> 1: dying to the Radiance in phase 4 of the battle several times
> 
> And 2: Moth Grandma deserving better.

The Essence was so bright. Emotions, memories. Lives. Lives intertwining infinitely, stretching back farther than she could comprehend. Thousands of years, the spirits of her ancestors created a fractal blaze of Essence across the underlying metaphysical structure of the plane.

The hum of harmonic attunement echoed through the tapestry of dreams, interrupted only by… Her.

Even before her ascension, the Seer had felt conflict within her heart. What she had been told in her youth, by the newly-reborn cult of the Radiance, was that the Radiance was perfection. The ultimate force of good. To defy the Radiance was to give oneself to unspeakable evil. At the time, it had seemed far better than the worship of the distant and often neglectful Pale King.

When the Infection came, she felt Her presence. People were dying, dying horrible deaths all around her, but no, it couldn’t be malevolence. The Radiance was simply punishing those who scorned her, she told herself. She told herself that for years.

When she heard her goddess screaming for violence, when she was guided to the Wielder— the CHILD— and ordered to kill them… she truly began to realize.

She tried to keep her faith. She truly did. She told the child of her tribe’s folly in apostasy, desperately trying to convince herself to believe that story again— after all, it was evil to doubt the glorious Radiance. She’d never fully BELIEVED that, but the fear, instilled in her by those dedicated to the worship of the Radiance was strong, even after all these years.

But the child. Everything about them shattered the rigid teachings of the cult. They were kind. Caring. That this little child was considered the enemy… it was almost unthinkable. Only one kind of being could harbor hate toward a creature so selfless.

A monster.

And she knew. 

It seemed like a miracle, her ascension. An ironic miracle— not from the Radiance, but from Her “enemy”, the Wielder.

Another roar shook the dreamscape, and the Seer sighed. The light was more irregular now. Something was definitely happening. With a rippling warp of the Essence around her, a black comet of Void was hurled against one of the floating islands.

It was the Wielder. And they were dying.

A gleaming blade had pierced their chest, their shell crumbling into Void as she approached. Their masked head slowly turned to her, trembling.

No.

The Essence gathered around the two, surrounding the Wielder. The Seer refused. This child would live. The child would LIVE! They were the true light! They were HOPE!

The Wielder gazed up at her as her will reunited their tiny body. The Seer could tell, even though their mask was expressionless, the shock emanating from the child.

“Yes. I am with you, Wielder. Always.”

The Void behind their mask rippled.

Tears…

The tender moment was interrupted, however, by the Radiance Herself, blasting through the ether with an enraged roar. The child tensed in her arms, clutching their nail. They had… FOUGHT?! The Radiance was bleeding Essence, and the Essence began to flow into the Seer. The light was no longer AROUND her— it was IN her. OF her. Everything came together. The Essence chose her. The cosmos were revealed, the fabric of reality rippling around her. And a tiny voice, a spiritual emanation of the Wielder.

t h r o w m e

Locking eyes with the Radiance, the Seer complied.

The child’s nail slashed at the goddess, freeing more and more Essence, more of the stolen dreams and memories She so jealously hoarded. The power of the Void tore at Her, attacks designed for destroying cities or rival deities easily evaded by the tiny warrior. Void began to surround the Radiance, full of round, white eyes.

Little beings, similar to the Wielder, swarmed out of the black mass, their amorphous bodies latching onto the Radiance.

And then the flood of Essence came, the Radiance’s being shredded by the Wielder and their… brethren? Everything became aligned. The Seer was one with the plane. And a black shape drifted through the ether toward her.

The Wielder’s disembodied spirit sleepily nestled into her arms, tendrils loosely grasping onto her.

“All hail! All hail!”

The Seer turned around. A rotund bug in grey robes was throwing themselves to the ground before her.

“...Pardon me?”

The robed bug seemed shocked.

“O Lady of Essence! Mother of Dreams! Thou honor me with thine radiant gaze!”

“I… er… what?”

“Thou art a god, O Shining One! Thy very being shines with Essence!”

As the bug continued to flail around on their knees, the realization hit the Seer like a charging Stag. She had absorbed the Essence from the Radiance. She.. had REPLACED the Radiance. She was the new goddess of dreams. Was… Was that even possible?

The old moth was brought back to her senses by the wriggling Void child practically burrowing under her cloak.

“And thou bearest the Dark One! O Goddess of Light, how glorious!”

“You… know the Wielder?”

“Mine fellow Godseekers detest them, but I… I see there is holy power in the Dark One, Your Ardent Ladyship.”

The Seer looked down at the shadowy child in her arms. Void particles were flowing into them, seemingly freely given from the inky bodies of their allies. Already, their shell was beginning to take shape once again.

“What would thou have of me, O Shining One?”

“Well… first, call me the Seer. If I am to have a title, please, call me that.”

“Wh… er… as you wish… Seer.”

“Second,” she began, willing a portal back to Hallownest into existence, “I need you to make sure this child knows what happened here when they wake. Tell them… that I shall always be watching over them.”

The Seer gently laid the little warrior in the circle of light, stroking their newly-reformed mask. She would be very busy. After all…

She had a plague to end.

**Author's Note:**

> The implication I intended is that after this, the Infection starts waning, and the Knight shows Hornet Godhome to find answers as to why it hasn’t completely stops, and then the Delicate Flower ending happens.
> 
> Don’t worry, our Little Ghost still survives!


End file.
